Current mood:	quixotic
Entry tags:	gamers, politics

Homosexuality Studies, or Big Catholic Families with Lots of Boys
I remember telling a gay gamer friend about this study a few years ago, and him getting a surprised and interested look on this face:

"I think it's almost beyond a doubt that genes have some influence," said Ray Blanchard, a researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, who studies the effect of birth order in predicting whether a male will be born homosexual. "My personal view is that there is probably more than one biological mechanism contributing toward homosexuality. I think it's also safe to say that there is at least one non-genetic influence."

Blanchard found that with each older brother in a family, the odds increase by about a third that a boy born later will be gay. This effect is not thought to be caused by genetics, but rather by antibodies produced by the mother's immune system during pregnancy.

This aside about birth order was embedded in a study report about how one theory of "the gay gene" is that it makes the females/daughters more prolific, while it makes the males/sons gay. This model addresses the nature versus nurture questions about "how can homosexuality be inherited; it should have died out if so."

It was interesting about my gamer friend because he is Sibling No.8 in a family with 8 kids, many of whom are boys. Sibling No.7 is also a gay son, and Sibling No.6 is a son who "sometimes has feelings like that." The Blanchard study showed how a woman gets progressively more estrogen with each pregnancy, so that once past the 4th baby, the fetus is typically awash in it. The likelihood of the boy baby growing up to be gay is way more than the norm.

When I read about the study, the thing that occurred to me was all the Catholic and fundamentalist religions with an emphasis on large families. Especially macho Latin cultures. So those poor boys; biology combined with religion pushed them to have a certain orientation. But that very religion often required that they be closeted.

So misguided. I'm glad that the youth of today are being a lot more color blind and accepting of orientation...